Hello, still being the newbie to microbiology I am, can someone give me some staining directions for shoe bacteria and fungus? Since right now they are pretty much white and transparent.

Here's alink that could help you out... http://www.hometrainingtools.com/articles/microscope-slide-stains-science-teaching-tip.html

 

Good luck

they only seem to be selling Eosin Y and Methlyene blue, and only small quantities of 15ml. I'm not exactly sure how effective those two products are.

Well, it depends what you want to stain, doesn't it. If you could be more specific, perhaps I could give you a better link, more appropriate for you.

Personally i would just trial out some household inks etc. and see which works best.

If some are white, could you not just use a black background?

My agar it self is white due to the lactose and other various materials

I am currently following the education for medical laborant and we work with staining techniques a lot ( although not with plant staning off course ).

 

Under the microscope most cells, plant or animal will be white/transparant. Staining is necessary to create contrast.

 

For bacteria the most commonly used staining technique is the Gram-staining, it will give a nice contrast in blue-purple depending on whether the bacteria is Gram positive or negative.

 

You can also use the Gram-staining on fungi, it will color the hyphes ( the "arms/wires" ) of the fungus Gram positive and the spores will be colored Gram negative.

 

Gram staining is quite easy to do, in our lab we don't really use it, but if I remember correct it shouldn't take long either.

 

To get a really good result there are a variety of staining techinques available, however to get the materials/chemicals can be costly.

 

If you have a lot of money though, you can do the PAS-reaction or the Grocott-reaction for fungi, and depending on the type of bacteria there are specialized staining techniques available as well.

 

Here is an indication of the chemicals you need to do a REAL staining like the PAS-reaction:

 

- alcohol 70%, 96%, 100%

- Xylene

- aquabidest/aquadest

- PerIodineacid 1%

- Schiff's solution ( best to buy it in the solution already )

- Acid sulfite solution

- Haematoxylin

- Running tapwater available

- A enclosure medium, Malinol for example.

 

 

As I said I do stains for medical stuff, so you can probably skip steps/chemicals. No need to work as accurate when it's just a bacteria or fungus right?

 

And I might have spelled the chemicals wrong, I am Dutch so I don't know all the names in English.